“Those are my names, but do you know what I am?”
“A tarted-up Ice Witch.”
Yulia let out a soft laugh. “You are very well informed. You’ve come, I assume, to steal my clients’ treasure?”
“I’ve come to recover an artifact, which doesn’t belong to your clients. You can walk away. I’m not here to kill people. Old job.”
The Witch clucked her tongue. “Nor am I, but here we are, yes? I will give this one chance, a professional courtesy to walk away…” She frowned. “You know me, but I don’t know you. What is your name?”
“I don’t do names. Too messy if both of us live. Someone might track me down to kill me later. Sorry.”
Shay kept her finger hovering over the trigger but did everything she could to keep her face neutral. She’d heard of the mercenary Witch. Even though Snegurka wasn’t paid to kill, more than a few men and women had perished at the end of her wand.
For the first time in a long time, Shay didn’t know if she was in a fight she could win.
The two women stared at each other in silence, the seconds passing, neither daring to even blink.
Shay pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The three bullets dropped to the ground in front of the Witch, all encased in ice.
Yulia whipped up her wand and shouted something in Russian. The blue stones whipped in front of the wand and an encircled blue hexagonal pattern of light appeared out of nowhere. Seven long, thin ice spears shot toward Shay.
Shay jerked to the side and returned fire, but ice shard after pointed ice shard kept firing her way. Only her long experience in evasive training allowed her the erratic movement to escape behind a nearby shack without any of the ice spears landing on their target. Her ass.
Shay whipped around the corner to fire off several more shots. All ended up as useless ice cubes in front of Yulia. An ice spear whizzed toward her, ripping through her jacket and piercing her arm.
“Fuck that hurts.” Shay sucked in a breath, ignoring the pain. “That was one of my favorite jackets, ice bitch!” she yelled.
Yulia laughed softly. “You cannot win. You must realize that now. My defensive spells are too powerful for your pathetic toy.”
“Knew I should have brought the rocket launcher or the damned bomb drone from the boat,” Shay muttered. Her left hand dropped to her final grenade. At least, her final fragmentation grenade. She reached down and grabbed the two smoke grenades, grinning through clenched teeth at a last-ditch idea.
The pins came out.
Shay spun around the corner, hurling the grenades in opposite directions. Both nearby but not directly at the witch. Yulia jerked back, her wand up.
Oh. So, your shield isn’t fool-proof, ice bitch?
Thick smoke shot from the grenades, and Shay snapped up her gun sending round after round toward the Witch’s last known location. Right before she ran out of rounds, she sent her final fragmentation hurling toward the center of the smoke.
The grenade exploded. No scream sounded, instead there was the sound of a splash.
“Did I get her?”
Shay pulled out a knife and rushed through the smoke. She suppressed a cough, her eyes burning, and found no sign of the Witch or her body. The pit caught her attention.
She came crawling out of that shit like a ghost. Why the fuck was she even in there? Do I even want to know?
A cough refocused Shay. She sheathed her knife, reloaded her gun, and rushed to the pit. A rusted metal ladder led down into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything, even as she pointed straight down and emptied her clip. After reloading for good measure, she emptied another clip into the pit.
Shay glanced around looking for something to seal the hole. A six-inch thick metal lid lay flat on the ground. She holstered her gun and ran to the lid, lifting it end over end. Training in the Warehouse was paying off again. The pain in her arm pulsed with every exertion. No time to bitch out now. With a mighty grunt, she picked up the lid and managed to slam it over the top of the pit.
“Damn is that thing heavy.”
A turning metal rod was on the top of the lid, forming a lock between the lid and the pipe. She pushed in the rod, shoving with her weight as metal ground against metal. Wonder later why anyone would need to secure the pit from the outside.
Shay rummaged in her backpack, locating a small vibration sensor and placed it on the lid. She pulled out her phone and synced it to the sensor. If the Witch survived and escaped, Shay’s phone would let her know.
Okay. Doing good. Six mercs and one Witch down. On to the artifact.
Shay patiently waited for two full minutes, timing it by her watch, her heart pounding, to see if Yulia would do her best snow ghost impression. Wouldn’t pay to turn her back on the Witch and her wand.
The lid didn’t move, and her phone didn’t chirp. She let out a breath, her shoulders relaxing as she thought about how she could brag to Peyton over pizza about taking down the Ice Witch.
Shay wrapped a piece of cloth around her arm to stem the blood flow, tying it off, holding one end in her teeth. She jogged to the larger tunnel dug by the industrial equipment the Alpha Explorers brought with them onto the small island.
She swung her backpack around and reached into it, pulling out a wrist lamp and a headlamp on a band. She put both on, reloaded her gun, and plunged into the gradually sloping tunnel.
Shay jogged down into the hole, listening for any hint of the Alpha Explorers.
Shay followed the beam of light, the thrill of the chase making her smile. “Just need a sign that says, abandon all hope, all ye who enter here. Damn, I love this job.”
Chapter Nineteen
No bullets or ice spears
